Poison
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: No matter how much she fired the Viper, she couldn't remove all the poison within her.


**Poison**

It's the tenth birthday of Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe, and she's taking out her grief over that on a line of bottles.

For normal people, birthdays are a time of joy and rejoicing. They're a time when little twerps get to be the centre of the universe, when they're given cake, presents, and forced to participate in all matter of games ranging from passing parcels, to pretending chairs have music, to pinning tails on donkeys unfortunate enough to get the worst surgeons in the world. Birthdays are when kids get their friends together, along with people who are pretending to be friends, who get their parents to buy presents for their not-friends, but turn up because cake is cake, Coke is Coke, and clowns are still funny.

But she's not normal. Long as she's had a sense of self, she's understood that she's not normal. Her life isn't normal, her parents aren't normal, and by extension, she isn't normal. Normal kids don't live in gargantuan mansions with grounds so large that they might as well be all of Texas. Normal kids get to see their parents – mummies and daddies who work 9-5 jobs, rather than running business empires that encompass everything from oil, to wine, to heck, even the arms trade. Normal kids get to go to school in the knowledge (or at least belief) that they _are_ normal, and as such, easily get into cliques. If five years of private school have taught her anything it's that if you aren't normal, you don't get anywhere on the social ladder. Not unless you're willing to let in the little sycophants into your life of riches.

 _Fuck 'em,_ she thinks to herself as she fires the rifle again.

It's still her tenth birthday. She's gone into her email, seen messages from her parents that have obviously been done by a temp, and she's got their birthday gifts of credit deposits put into her everyday account (separate from her long-saver account of course). Like, they don't know what she's into, but they know that their daughter is still a kid, and kids like stuff, so therefore she can buy stuff. Least when she isn't shoplifting, because being able to buy whatever you want, whenever you want is actually quite boring. Stealing takes effort. Stealing means swiping a Mars bar and not letting anyone see. Yeah, it's done in the knowledge that your parents can bail you out if it goes wrong (and it has, quite a few times), but hey, it's something, right?

She fires the rifle again. Another innocent bottle gets shattered into pieces. While there aren't any tailless donkeys here today that are getting the worst vets in the United States, their glass cousins (a few animal kingdoms removed) are getting the same treatment.

 **Bam.** A bottle shatters.

 **Bam.** She misses.

 **Bam.** She hits nothing.

 **Bam.** She misses again, and throws down the rifle with a curse that would make even the hardest Texas girl blush. Still, apart from her, there aren't any girls or boys for a few dozen acres. In fact, apart from her, the only person present is B.O.B. B.O.B, who's walking up to her back from the house with another crate of bottles (beer, the lot of it), and one giant bottle of lemonade.

"You took your time," she says.

B.O.B. doesn't say anything. Not that that's strange – B.O.B. never says anything. He's part of a line of omnic butlers that were built just before the war. A good butler is meant to be there when needed, but never noticed. Ergo, the designers thought that strong and silent was the way to go – have servants that could hear, and serve every whim, but never speak themselves. People talk. Butlers are still people. Omnics aren't people, so cut out the ability to speak, and voila. Instant sales…least up to the Omnic Crisis, at which point no-one wants a butler, least of all a robot one.

"Thanks," she says, as B.O.B. pours her a glass of lemonade. She takes a sip. "Hmm. Good. Not great, but good."

B.O.B. doesn't say anything. He just starts setting the beer bottles along the fence Elizabeth is shooting at. She hits a bottle, shatters the glass, spills the beer. Her pissing off her father is just a bonus…provided he even notices at all.

"More," she says, holding out the glass again. B.O.B. obliges.

"Thanks."

B.O.B. doesn't give her "the look" anymore. The look that he gave her seven years ago when she thanked him the first time. Back then, when she had some illusions of life being normal and civil, she thanked everybody, because that's what people (rich girls especially) did. Of course, as her mother told her seconds later, you didn't thank butlers, and you sure as hell didn't thank omnics. Butlers are there to serve. Robots like B.O.B. are programmed to serve, so they don't need thanks. She starts treating him like a person, and people will think she's one of those loony omnic sympathizers or somesuch, or worse, the omnics themselves will start to get ideas. She didn't understand the problem then. She doesn't really get the problem now.

"Thanks," she says, as B.O.B. finishes setting up the bottles.

But she's going to thank B.O.B. He (not "it," "he," she reminds herself) is the only problem on this whole stinking planet that deserves her thanks. B.O.B. has always been there. B.O.B.'s the one who's baked cakes, bandaged injuries, been there to pick her up from school or the sheriff's office. Heck, B.O.B. is the one that taught her to shoot in the first place. Maybe he understands why. Maybe not. But unlike that night seven years ago, he no longer gives "the look," so Elizabeth's money (all 1.14 million of it, long-saver account not included) is on the former.

 **Bam.** She fires, one of the bottles shattering. She looks at B.O.B. Just standing there, he looks at her.

"You think dad'll mind?" she asks.

B.O.B. says nothing.

"I mean, I'm breaking his beer, shooting his rifle…" She waves it around. "The Viper. Vintage. Not one of those fancy-smancy auto-locking rifles that can down a rabbit without aiming proper, I'm talking genuine marksmanship.

B.O.B. says nothing.

"Eh, what do you know?"

She fires. And fires. And fires again. The Viper is well named, she reflects. Like the snake of its namesake, every shot gets some of the poison within her out into the open.

 **Bam. Bam. Bam.**

Course, she's been filled with poison for ten years, and there ain't enough bullets in this stinking country to drain it all out.

 **Bam.**

The penultimate bottle shatters. Ashe lowers the rifle, sweating. Texas summers are pretty fierce. Actually, summers are pretty fierce everywhere these days. She glances at one of the oil derricks across the field – no-one uses oil for transport anymore, but it's still a vital source of plastics. Still, she knows why the summers are hot, and why there's more plastic than fish in the sea these days, and knows that her parents are part of the reason why.

So she walks up to the bottle, opens it, and begins to drink. B.O.B. walks up to her.

"Piss off Bob."

The omnic stops, tilting his head like a puppy.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm drinking. Ten years old. Birthday gift right?"

B.O.B. just stands there. It's like something from one of those Asimov novels she reflects – like there's some laws of his that are in conflict, and he doesn't know how to proceed.

"Y'know," she said. "If my mum or dad told you to do one thing, and I told you to do another thing, what would you do?"

B.O.B. just stands there.

"Do you even know?"

B.O.B. just stands there.

"Fuck it." She takes a sip of the beer – it tastes terrible, it's making her even more thirsty, but damn it, breaking beer bottles just isn't cutting it for her anymore. B.O.B., for his part, still just stands there.

"Damn it Bob, say something," she says.

He just stands there.

"Anything!"

He just stands there.

"Damn it!"

B.O.B. is good to her 90% of the time. Other 10%, she wants to scream just like this. His silence is more deafening than even the Viper. Cursing under her breath, she begins tearing out the grass, revealing the dirt beneath. Sweat pours down her face, her cowgirl hat (one of the few things her parents ever actually bought for her as a birthday gift outside of "here's money, use it") not doing its job in protecting her from the sun. Certainly her face is red enough.

"Go on," she says, gesturing towards the dirt, drinking more of the beer, even as she's starting to feel funny. "Write something. Anything you want to say, write it."

B.O.B. obliges. He kneels down and with one of his giant fingers, writes something in the dirt. It only takes him a few seconds, but for Ashe, it feels like…actually, she isn't sure. She isn't feeling too good. But her eyes widen as she sees what B.O.B. has written. Her eyes widen still as she sees him stand up. She hiccups, and after a moment, throws her arms around her Big Omnic Butler Bodyguard BBF Badass, other titles beginning with "b" pending.

"Thanks Bob," she whispers.

B.O.B. says nothing. But he does give her a pat on the head, squashing her cowboy hat slightly. But she doesn't care. She just looks at what B.O.B. has written.

 **HAPPY BIRTHDAY**

And then she throws up.

That beer is really terrible.


End file.
